Hell, you can even kill using a fucking mascara pen eyeliner.” He tossed a pellet of chewing gum into his mouth.
Marcel said to the man, “Gleb, you’ve always been a professional.”
Gleb sat back, smirked and started chewing the gum.
“What are you talking about?” said the red-faced beer drinker. He had opened another beer can already. “Without arms, we’re all going to be fucking fodder for those freaks in no time!”
There was a general commotion again, and Andy had to dismiss the meeting.
“We’ve had enough of talking,” Andy said. “The sooner we begin doing something, the better.”
After the meeting, everyone was given a task to do. Some people helped to reinforce the barricades near doors, dragging all the sofas, tables, chairs, hassocks, and whatnot from the upper floors to block the doorways. Erkan Zorlu went into the basement to install the power generator. The sanitary engineer and two technicians helped him. The garage door had to be sealed, and Erkan could handle a welder’s equipment. He did his job in three hours.
The chambermaids continued to serve in the rooms. Some of them sought to escape from fear and depression, and they wanted to be around people. They were glad to be useful again. The guests were supportive and helped the maids. It seemed ridiculous to be complaining about dirty linen or dirty pillows in a critical situation like this when everything was falling apart. Some of them put their rooms in order themselves.
The waiters and waitresses went back to their duties. Due to the shortage of waiters, some of the guests volunteered to help out at mealtimes.
None of the guards were gone during the beginning of the chaos. Many strong men among the guests offered to be guards.
Andy understood that the people were close to panic, and it was necessary to go on acting as if everything was normal to keep their spirits up.
***
Ivan, the guard whose presence was not necessary anymore in the CCTV room because of the power outage, was standing near the window, as Andy walked along the corridor. There was a shade of worry on the man’s face.
“What’s wrong, Ivan?” Andy asked him.
“I don’t know, sir,” the young man said. “I just remember clearly that the cash-in-transit truck was at the north of the building. Now it has moved here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Keep watching,” Andy said. “If you see something unusual,” he held up his walkie-talkie, “let me know.”
“Sure.” Ivan nodded. “Right away.”
***
Goran ran his kitchen like a general in a battlefield. He was barking out orders to his cook assistants, those of them who hadn’t yet lapsed into depression and had come down into the kitchen to make meals. Some of them had come wearing jeans or other casual clothes, but Goran had made them put on their uniforms. He himself had his immaculately white chef hat on. It gave him extra power in the kitchen.
“Why do we need this outfit?” one of his assistants asked him. “Who cares? We could be dead in an hour.”
“Remember the Second World War history?” Goran asked him. “What was the first sign, which showed that concentration camp prisoners weren’t going to make it and die soon?”
The cook shook his head and looked quizzically at him.
“They stopped cleaning their teeth,” he said.
Nobody said a word.
“And besides,” Goran said. “We’re the Arkaim Hotel. We gotta be goddamn classy at all times.”
Not all of the cooks agreed, but they donned their uniforms anyway.
They hadn’t been so busy since the preparation for St. Valentine’s Day and were bustling in and out, washing dishes, bringing and taking away the trays. There had been no cooking since Saturday when all the employees and guests had had to fight against the unexpected visitors who were thirsty for their blood.
Goran treated his job as an art. This was one of the conditions, on which Andrew Thomas chose his staff: a person should see what he or she does as an art performance. Three days ago he had had twenty cooks under his command. Some of them had been carefully picked by Goran himself. He was a great team builder. But this Sunday he had a skeleton crew – only eight cooks. But he hoped to get some help from volunteers soon. After all, they were going to get the food, too.
A male cook came up to him with a plate in his hands. “It’s a pity, Goran. The fromage blanc is off.”
Goran took the plate, smelled at the cheese and handed it back with a wince. “You know what to do with it. Dispose of everything that is rotten. But don’t get rid of the expired food yet. We don’t know for how long we’ll be trapped here.”
The power had been out for three hours now, and Goran turned a suite on the second floor into an ad hoc fridge storage by bringing all the food there and keeping all the windows open to let the cold February wind preserve the perishable products longer.
Goran came up to the table where a huge cake sat.
Darya Petrakova, a slim woman in her thirties, who worked as a dessert cook, was covering the cake with white chocolate ganache.
“Hey, Dasha,” Goran said, smiling. “That’s a nice job! Yummy!”
He looked at her but she lowered her eyes – blue ice.
She said nothing. She finished the icing and went to the sink to wash her hands.
Goran and Darya had been dating for a week until this new redheaded chambermaid Marina appeared on Goran’s horizon. Naturally, he lost his interest in Darya, who was modest and a bit shy and whose kiss he had managed to steal only twice during this week, and focused his attention on Marina’s head-spinning boobs.
That Friday morning, when the meteorite arrived, he was standing in the middle of the little windowless locker room and kissing Marina on her naked breasts, which burst out her blouse like two ripe honey pomelos.
They heard a key being inserted into the keyhole. It was turned twice, and the door opened.
The couple stopped doing what they had been so passionately doing and looked at Darya, who entered the room. It was her day off, and she dropped by to get some stuff she had left in her locker.
Darya clutched her purse she was carrying and gave a gasp of surprise. Marina let out a trickle of laughter and began hiding her delights. Goran looked angrily at Darya. Darya’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints, and she threw the purse at them. Goran ducked, and the purse caught Marina’s earring. A red droplet of blood fell from the bleeding ear on Marina’s white blouse.
“Are you fucking mental, you fucking cow?” Marina said. She was beside herself with anger. There was a vehement exchange of altercations in rude Russian.
